The 



Cambridge Classical Course 



An Essay in Anticipation of Further Reform 



BY 

F. M. CORNFORD 

FELLOW OF TRINITY COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE 



Quant a nous, nous respectons ca et la et nous epargnons partout le 
passe, pourvu qu'il consente a etre mort. S'il veut etre vivant, nous 
l'attaquons, et nous tachons de le tuer. — Victor Hugo. 



CAMBRIDGE 
W. HEFFER & SONS 

1903 



The 



Cambridge Classical Course 



An Essay in Anticipation of Further Reform 



F. M.-'CORNFORD 

FELLOW OF TRINITY COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE 



Quant a nous, nous respectons ca et la et nous 6pargnons partout le 
§, pourvu qu'il consente a. etre mort. S'il veut etre vivant, nous 
l'attaquons, et nous tachons de le tuer. — Victor Hugo. 



CAMBRIDGE 
W. HEFFER & SONS 

1903 



TO THE CAMBRIDGE CLASSICAL SOCIETY 



CONTENTS 



PAGE 



Introductory . . . . . . .5 

Composition and Translation .... 10 

Lectures and Books . . . . . .17 

The Lecture System ..... 24 

Epilogue . . . . . . .31 



INTRODUCTORY 

Lord Eea said to Sir David Kamsay, ' Well, God mend all ! ' 
Eamsay answered, ' Nay, by God, Donald, we must help Him to 
mend it.' — Obiter Dicta. 

It needs no exceptional powers of foresight to discern 
that an organised assault will soon be made upon what 
is called Classical Education. The assailants will not 
limit their range to the position of Greek as a com- 
pulsory subject in the previous examinations at Oxford 
and Cambridge. They will call in question the whole 
Classical Course in the Universities and the public 
schools ; and they will challenge not merely its present 
predominance, but its right to bare existence. 

I shall leave to abler hands than mine the question 
whether the ancient literatures of Greece and Italy are 
an effective instrument of liberal education. My own 
opinion (if I may advance it without proof) is that the 
Classical Course can be made to be as useful and 
educative as any other course which has yet appeared 
in the field of competition.* But I have some sympathy 

* Since it is now recognised that in many ways the Germans 
understand education better than the English, I am glad to 
think that my opinion is endorsed by German practice. An 
outline of the facts which show how high a position in their 
scheme they give to classics, will be found in an article by 
Mr. T. Eice Holmes in the National Beview, September, 1903. 

5 



6 THE CAMBBIDGE CLASSICAL COUESE 

with our critics when they describe our methods of 
teaching as designed to attain, by obsolete means, an 
end which is wrongly conceived and, even so, seldom 
attained in fact. If this be true, the impending attack 
will be most wisely met, not by an obstinate and blind 
defence of our system as it at present exists, but by a 
frank avowal of its defects and a declaration, to which 
at the same time our actions must testify, that we are 
willing to remedy them. To valid criticism the proper 
answer is reform. When the criticism, whether friendly 
or hostile, gives warning of a determined and powerful 
onset, it is merely prudent that the reform should begin 
without delay. 

The reader perhaps will smile when I say that 
classical teaching at the public schools appears to need 
more radical change than classical teaching at the 
Universities. But it seems true that the earlier the 
stage of instruction, the more doubt there is about the 
proper method. Some competent authorities maintain 
that the schools begin where they should end, and end 
where they should begin. That such diversity of 
opinion is possible shows that the whole question 
should forthwith be made the subject of searching 
inquiry by a committee of experts. It may be hoped 
that this inquiry will be undertaken by the new 
Classical Association of England and Wales, in con- 
junction with the similar Association in Scotland. We 
shall then know how far the public schools have 
advanced since Dr. Buck gave his famous advice to 
Captain Borrow. ' Listen to me,' said the divine ; 
' there is but one good school book in the world — the 
one I use in my seminary — Lilly's Latin Grammar, in 
which your son has already made some progress. If you 
can by any means, either fair or foul, induce him to 
get by heart Lilly's Latin Grammar, you may set your 
heart at rest with respect to him ; I myself will be his 
warrant. I never yet knew a boy that was induced, 
either by fair means or foul, to learn Lilly's Latin 



INTKODUCTOKY 7 

Grammar by heart, who did not turn out a man, 
provided he lived long enough.' 

My present object is not to discuss whether the 
means in use are fair or foul ; nor yet whether the end 
is, or is not, all that Dr. Buck believed it to be. I am 
not now concerned with the public schools and their 
methods. I wish only to lay before the Cambridge 
Classical Society a few suggestions as to the direction 
which I believe that reform should take here in the 
University. A young and inexperienced teacher must 
feel diffident when he addresses on such a subject as this 
a body of men who are nearly all older and wiser than 
himself, and to some of whom, as his own instructors 
and advisers, he owes an always increasing debt. The 
reader is invited to take the suggestions on their 
intrinsic merits, which are necessarily unaffected by the 
insignificance of their author. 

I hasten to say that I am not going to plead that any 
further modification should at once be made in the 
scheme of examination for Part I. The present scheme 
embodies a substantial reform and creates a splendid 
opportunity. It will be wise to ascertain carefully how 
it works before we attempt to alter it again. But, 
grateful as we may well be to those gentlemen who in 
devising and carrying this measure did a great service 
to Cambridge Classics, it may not be prudent to sit 
down in satisfied contemplation of the result achieved, 
and then awaken, ten years later, to find it less perfect 
than we dreamed. It is worth while, even at this early 
stage, to begin a forecast of its future. If I may hazard 
a prediction, I will say that the syllabus will turn out 
to be both redundant and defective. 

To begin with its redundancy. The effect of the 
scheme is not to redistribute, still less to lighten, the 
burden which already weighed heavily enough upon 
lecturer and student. It is simply an uncompensated 
increase. No doubt the feeling which might have 
deterred the Senate from giving its sanction to any 



8 THE CAMBRIDGE CLASSICAL COURSE 

curtailment of the old examination would have been a 
fear of endangering that ' thoroughness ' "which has 
been our pride. But it is seldom asked in what it is 
that we ought to be thorough. It is too often assumed 
that the only answer must be : a thorough knowledge 
of syntax. For Lilly's Latin Grammar we substitute 
Goodwin's Moods and Tenses. By all means let us 
continue to be thorough ; but let us recognise that a 
thorough grasp of ideas is a thing of worth, and quite 
distinct from a superficial 'viewiness.' To retain the 
full bulk of the old linguistic examination is precisely 
to encourage a hasty treatment of the new subjects. 
If these last are to be of real value for education, room 
must be cleared, and time allowed, for thoroughness 
in this department also. That this can be done, and 
done without sacrificing the genuine advantages of the 
linguistic training, I hope to show in the sequel. 

The deficiencies of the syllabus are patent enough. 
We have found a place for sculpture and architecture, 
but not for vase-painting, or for coins, or for gems — all 
of them manageable and fascinating objects of study. 
I suppose that the reason for excluding these objects 
was that it was thought to be less easy to deal with 
them by the method of ' passages for translation and 
comment.' If this supposition be correct, then — 
without disputing the merits of the method — we 
may ask what principle dictated the far more serious 
omission of Mythology and Religion — subjects which 
may be illustrated from every page of ancient litera- 
ture. If all that is wanted is men to teach these 
subjects and time for them to be studied, we ought to 
find the men, and to provide the time by lightening 
other parts of the syllabus. I do not, of course, pro- 
pose that these subjects should be compulsory. But I 
can see no reason why they should not stand as alterna- 
tives to sculpture and architecture. 

Such, as it seems to me, are some of the excesses and 
the defects of the present scheme. The changes I shall 



INTBODUCTOBY 9 

advocate are not great changes. The better adaptation 
of our teaching and the organisation of the lecture 
system are, for the moment, matters of more pressing 
importance than the remodelling of the Tripos. I 
intend to consider our methods in some detail, with a 
view to discovering in what fields we can economise 
and retrench, and in what directions we may hope to 
expand. 



COMPOSITION AND TRANSLATION 

It does not follow that, if ten pounds of meat is too much and 
two is not enough, a trainer will prescribe six pounds ; for this 
may itself be too much or too little for the individual who is to 
take it. It may be too little for a Milo, and too much for a 
beginner. — Aristotle, Ethics. 

The utility of the practice of composing in an ancient 
language will here be neither disputed — for I believe it 
is great — , nor upheld — for I believe it is exaggerated. 
My only question is whether all the profit obtained 
from the exercise might not be obtained in a much 
shorter time. In some colleges two pieces a week are 
set. The men may be supposed to spend on the two 
together not less than four or five hours.* Five hours 
are perhaps for most undergraduates an average work- 
ing day. Now that we have added so much to their 
other work, can they afford to give one-sixth of their 
time to this exercise? Or (as I should prefer to put 
the question) do they gain much more in five hours 
than they would gain in one ? 

On this point I have two suggestions to make. The 
shortness of my experience as a teacher may tell against 
me ; but I can claim the compensating advantage, that 
my experience as a learner is proportionately recent. At 
any rate, the opinions are offered on their own merits. 
I may hold them for insufficient reasons ; but it does 
not follow that they are false. 

* One of my own pupils informed me that he sometimes spent 
from seven to eight hours. 

10 



COMPOSITION AND TEANSLATION 11 

I have observed, in myself and in others, that the 
power of writing composition not only may not suffer 
loss, but may be substantially increased, in the absence 
of continual practice. The truth is that command over 
a foreign language which you cannot talk is gained 
chiefly by wide and careful reading. A man cannot 
write it until he has begun to be able to think in it ; 
and he ought not to try. Our most backward students 
produce week after week pages of stuff, of which you 
can hardly say more than that the words are Greek or 
Latin words. We stare impotently at the versions. 
Not a sentence, not a phrase, is Greek or Latin ; and 
you can no more explain why they are not than you 
can explain to a deaf man why a casual series of notes 
is not music. The reason is obvious. The student has 
no familiarity with the literature as it is written. He 
cannot write it until he has at least entered on the 
stage in which the right word, the idiomatic turn of 
expression, the natural mould of the sentence, occur 
spontaneously and inevitably to the mind. This stage 
comes only after a fairly wide acquaintance with the 
authors. To ask him to write before he has reached 
it is to ask him to use an instrument which he simply 
does not possess. He is like a man who knows no 
German trying to talk it with no aid but a dictionary. 
The remedy which one is at first inclined to apply is to 
make the backward man do more composition. The right 
prescription is just the reverse ; he ought to do none at 
all, but read and read until the power begins to come. 

At the other end of the scale is the man who, when 
he comes up from school, writes very nearly as well 
as he will write three years later.* In his case the 
small advance which he makes is probably due more 

* One of my pupils in his third year told me he thought he wrote 
verse less well than when he left school. Probably his standard 
had risen unconsciously ; but if he only does it equally well, what 
of the three hours a week for two years spent in making no 
progress at all? 



12 THE CAMBKIDGE CLASSICAL COUESE 

to his reading than to his weekly exercises. I certainly 
found that after an intermission of eighteen months I 
could write hetter than I could when I left off. Ease 
and readiness can be recovered after a long interval by 
a little gymnastic. In this class of cases, then, uninter- 
rupted and frequent practice is often sheer waste of 
time. 

The bulk of our students form a class intermediate 
between these two extremes. The amount of composi- 
tion they ought to do gradually increases till a point is 
reached after which regular practice seems to be subject 
to a law of diminishing return. From that point more 
reading and less writing are the surest means to further 
advance. And it should not be forgotten that by that 
time a man has learnt most of the lessons which com- 
position is specially suited to teach. Its educational 
value is greatly diminished. Our object is to produce, 
not elegant exercises, but educated men. 

If these observations are correct, it follows that com- 
position ought never to be begun before a late stage in 
the school career. It follows also that the regular 
production of two exercises a week for three years is not 
the most profitable method for any of the three classes 
considered. Every individual needs different treat- 
ment ; and I doubt whether the rigid enforcement of 
our present system yields the best possible results with 
the least possible waste in one case out of a hundred. 

So far, these conclusions do not demand a change in 
the plan of our curriculum. They only show (if they 
are valid) that the plan should be mitigated by liberal 
dispensations. My second suggestion is different in 
scope : it touches the curriculum itself. 

In the face of a tradition which is supposed to be 
venerable because it is antique, some boldness is needed 
to avow the belief that verse composition ought to be 
optional. What is a truism to free thought is a 
damnable heresy to the orthodox. To add that Greek 



COMPOSITION AND TRANSLATION 13 

prose and Latin prose might well be alternatives, is to 
provoke Olympian thunderblasts. Yet a strong case 
can be made out in support of both these propositions. 

That many men are not, and never will be, able to 
write verse in an ancient language is, in practice, now 
generally admitted. But the opinion still prevails that 
to make the Psalms of David turn stupendous somer- 
saults into the metre which Ovid thought suitable to 
the Art of Love is an elegant and almost obligatory 
accomplishment. It is to us what tatting and poker- 
work were to our grandmothers. Now, it is obvious 
that all classical men should understand the scansion of 
ancient metres. Even this object is achieved only for 
three or four metres in Latin and one or two metres in 
Greek. I never knew an undergraduate who could 
scan a chorus of Sophocles ; and Pindar might as 
well have written in prose. Still, it is something to 
have that familiarity with hexameters, elegiacs, and 
iambics, which can only be acquired by making them. 
Probably most of those who have not the pecular gift 
of verse-writing are the better for making some 
attempts at a late stage. But the retention of verse- 
composition in any other way than as an optional 
subject is indefensible. To one who comes fresh to this 
futile task of teaching music to the deaf — if teaching it 
can be called — it is heart-breaking to think of the 
waste of unnumbered hours which might be given by 
the student to education, and would be better spent by 
the lecturer in doing nothing at all. To encourage this 
waste by our examination scheme is — I say it in earnest 
— a sin against education, and a sin against the stu- 
dents, for the employment of whose time we are in part 
responsible. 

On this point I feel no doubts, and I can support no 
compromise. The other proposition, that Greek prose 
and Latin prose might be alternative, is more open to 
dispute, and I advance it with less confidence. To 
maintain that both are necessary seems to involve the 



14 THE CAMBEIDGE CLASSICAL COUKSE 

premiss that each has some specific benefit which the 
other has not. Yet, a careful consideration of the 
peculiar utilities of prose composition might show 
that they are possessed equally by both kinds. The 
mere power of writing a dead language is in itself 
valueless. The chief profit gained by the attempt 
arises from the special effort it entails. Complex 
ideas have to be analysed into their constituents. 
Those constituents which are relevant must be distin- 
guished from those which are not. For the elements 
so selected an adequate expression must be discovered 
in a language so different from our own that very 
few of the words it uses precisely coincide in mean- 
ing with their dictionary ' equivalents ' in English. 
This process, as all know who have gone through it, 
cultivates the sense of style, and is a good training 
in clear thought. Herein lies the peculiar superiority 
which composition in a long dead, and therefore 
widely different, language has over composition in a 
modern tongue. French or German has in almost all 
cases a sufficiently exact equivalent for even the most 
complex ideas. Consequently, the process of analysis 
and reconstruction is rarely necessary. The living 
languages have, of course, the great external advan- 
tage of being useful. But against that must be 
weighed the great internal advantage, possessed by 
the dead languages, of being, in this particular respect, 
far more educative. 

Now, if I have correctly described the specific benefit 
of writing Greek or Latin, it is at once clear that it 
belongs equally to both tongues. If Latin is more 
closely akin to a great part of our own vocabulary, 
Greek has a greater wealth of ideas, and a more 
flexible idiom. The two are about equally remote 
from contemporary English. Would it not, then, be 
wise, in some cases at least, to give up one in order 
to devote perhaps a little more time to mastering 
the other, the balance of time saved being spent on 



COMPOSITION AND TKANSLATION 15 

different employment? Few men take to both lan- 
guages with equal readiness. To some Latin is dull ; 
to others Greek is difficult. Might not every student 
begin by trying both, find out which is the more con- 
genial, and then concentrate according to his choice ? 
I should be blind indeed if I were not aware that 
this proposal is far removed from that uninteresting 
region which bears the uninteresting name of ' practical 
politics.' But to hitch one's waggon to a star, or even 
to a meteor, may just serve to lift it out of a rut. Ask 
for an ideal, and you may gain a compromise. The 
previous proposal, to make verse composition optional, 
is practical and imperative. If we care to save classical 
education, we cannot too soon begin to work for its 
enactment. 

About written translation I have little to say — for 
two reasons. First, it does not appear that the men 
give too much time to this valuable exercise, or that 
the amount of it need be varied much to suit the 
requirements of different individuals. Second, no 
reduction of the amount required in the Tripos would 
have any effect on the teaching course. Consequently, 
if this amount is — as I believe it to be — unnecessarily 
large, the evil comes to no more than so much super- 
fluous labour to all concerned in the examination. 

The effect of the additional papers in the Tripos last 
year was very nearly to double the amount of prose 
translation, and to increase the amount of verse trans- 
lation by more than one-third.* Now, if it was possible 
with the five translation papers in the old examination 
to ascertain the merits of the candidates, the whole of 
this enormous increase is superfluous. There are two 
rational courses. One is not to require that the pas- 

* The number of lines in the five translation papers was : 
Prose, 189 ; verse, 264. The number of lines in the new papers : 
Prose, 178 ; verse, 93 (excluding an alternative). 



16 THE CAMBEIDGE CLASSICAL COUESE 

sages in the new papers should be translated. To this 
alternative there are obvious objections. The other is 
to drop at the very least one of the old translation 
papers. To this alternative I can discover no objections 
at all. 



LECTURES AND BOOKS 

Talking of education, ' People have nowadays (said he) got a 
strange opinion that everything should be taught by lectures. 
Now, I cannot see that lectures can do so much good as reading 
the books from which the lectures are taken. I know nothing 
that can be best taught by lectures, except where experiments 
are to be shewn. You may teach chymistry by lectures : — You 
might teach making of shoes by lectures ! ' 

Boswell, Life of Johnson. 

The tradition of lectures on classical texts goes back 
at least as far as the Revival of Learning ; and the five 
centuries that have passed since Manuel Chrysoloras 
lectured in Florence have seen very little change in 
this method of instruction. I borrow from Sir Richard 
Jebb's admirable sketch of the Classical Renaissance * the 
following description of a fifteenth century lecture : — 

' The method of teaching was determined by the 
peculiar conditions. Among Filelfo's large audience 
there would be many, possibly a majority, who would 
regard the lecture mainly as a display of Latin eloquence, 
and who would not attempt to take notes. But there 
would also be many serious students, intent on recording 
what the lecturer said ; and of these only a few would 
possess manuscripts of the author — Cicero, for example 
— whom he was expounding. After an introduction, 
Filelfo would therefore dictate a portion of Cicero's 
text, which the students would transcribe. To this he 
would add a commentary, dealing with grammar, with 
the usage of words, and with everything in the subject 
matter which needed to be explained or illustrated. 
Thus, at the end of such a course, the lecturer would 
have dictated a fully annotated edition of a classical 
* Cambridge Modem History, i. p. 554. 

17 



18 THE CAMBRIDGE CLASSICAL COURSE 

book, or portion of a book, which he was treating ; and 
the diligent student would have transcribed it.' 

Now, to a stranger from some far continent it 
might come as an amazing revelation that there are 
two details — and two only — in this description which 
will not fit a contemporary lecture in Cambridge. We 
no longer dictate the text; for the progress made in 
the art of printing, together with German labour and 
enterprise, has supplied us with cheap series, published 
in Leipsig. It is certain, too, that the majority of 
students do not regard our lectures as a display of 
eloquence. But, apart from these unimportant details, 
our method, in perhaps the largest class of classical 
lectures, is precisely that which, according to Sir 
Richard Jebb, was determined for Filelfo by the 
' peculiar conditions ' of the fifteenth century. Here 
is, at any rate, matter for reflection. 

For it cannot be said that in every relevant respect 
those conditions, so far from being ' peculiar,' have 
remained without change since 1430. Around and 
about our small collection of classical texts the 
scholarship of fourteen generations has built up an 
enormous literature. Of the most famous authors one 
may say that not a sentence, not a line, not a phrase, 
but has been again and again pondered and examined, 
emended by the acumen of scores among the keenest 
intellects of Europe, and illustrated from all the 
resources of laborious and gigantic erudition. The 
fruit of these toils has been stored in printed books ; 
and it is these books that make the difference between 
our conditions and the peculiar conditions of Filelfo. 

And yet our method, in the class of lectures I am 
considering, is the fifteenth century method. We still 
' add a commentary, dealing with grammar, and with 
the usage of words, and with everything in the subject 
matter which needs to be explained or illustrated.' 
We carry one more cage of owls to Athens : we foist 
upon Newcastle one more sack of coals. Meanwhile, 



LECTUEES AND BOOKS 19 

the works of Bentley and Porson, of Lobeck and 
Madvig, and of a thousand other Titans, stand in 
rows on the shelves of our libraries, where the student 
of to-day rarely finds opportunity or encouragement 
to seek them. 

Here I must pause for a moment to guard against 
misapprehension. Outside the scholar's world it is 
vulgarly supposed that we spend all our time in put- 
ting an infinitesimally higher polish on the texts, in 
emending emendations and refining upon refinements. 
And a glance at our learned periodicals — with the 
exception of the Hellenic Journal, which is too ex- 
pensive to be seen by many people — would confirm 
this impression. If the impression were true, scholar- 
ship would indeed be a pardonable amusement for men 
of leisure in a world where nothing more important 
was left to be done. But it is not true. Work of this 
sort is indeed necessary as a means ; and, further, it 
trains a faculty of nice discrimination which will not 
be valueless so long as errors in spheres of wide and 
acknowledged import continue to arise from blurred 
distinctions and differences confounded. But this is not 
the chief employment of many even among professional 
scholars. In the work of the teacher it holds a low, 
subordinate position, befitting a means which is never 
an end. The end of scholarship is different, and I would 
describe it by the following comparison. 

The ancient classics resemble the universe. They are 
always there, and they are very much the same as ever. 
But as the philosophy of every new age puts a fresh and 
original construction on the universe, so in the classics 
scholarship finds a perennial object for ever fresh and 
original interpretation. A text may be brought so near 
perfection that further emendation is nearly useless ; 
and then that chapter of our task is closed. But where 
the editor ends, the work of the interpreter begins. He 
who supposes that scholarship has no further interest 
must either know little of Hellenic art and culture, or 



20 THE CAMBEIDGE CLASSICAL COUESE 

care little for the knowledge, the appreciation, and the 
love, of beauty. 

These remarks have another bearing on our present 
topic, lectures and books. A certain part of the 
scholar's results can be put upon record and stand 
as a permanent possession. It can be deposited in 
editions, commentaries, and works of reference. Our 
stock of these, large as it is, is amazingly incomplete. 
Too much labour has been spent on some parts of the 
field, too little on others. Many a harvest still waits 
for the sickle. But every solid addition to our store 
is an asset of enduring utility. The other part of the 
scholar's work cannot so well be done by books. It 
must be done anew for every generation by the living 
word. This is the work of interpretation which I have 
attempted feebly to describe. The lecturer holds the 
clue of an uncharted labyrinth. But, unlike an ordi- 
nary guide and interpreter, he has first to kindle the 
desire for exploration. " L 'essentiel, en effet, dans 
V education, ce nest pas la doctrine enseignee, c'est Veveil." 
It is easy to praise — with no very clear conception of 
its nature — the Socratic method; it is hard to keep 
steadily in view the Socratic aim. The prince of 
educators never communicated a dose of informa- 
tion ; he never imposed an opinion or dictated a com- 
mentary. His single object was to make the hearer 
feel that ignorance should mean dissatisfaction and dis- 
tress, interest and wonder, the unquenchable desire to 
know and to understand. The books that cause this 
feeling are rare indeed ; it can hardly be conveyed save 
through the quickening contact of the mature mind 
with the immature, the shock of an instant, actual 
enthusiasm. 

The intention of the last paragraph is not didactic. 
I am not so impudent as to teach my own teachers 
their business, nor so ungrateful as to omit an acknow- 
ledgment of the debt I have owed to courses which 
I have heard as a student. It would be wicked to give 



LECTUEES AND BOOKS 21 

currency to the impression that the high function I 
have ascribed to the lecturer is not performed by many 
lecturers in Cambridge. I would not even be taken to 
imply that the method of Filelfo is not still the best 
method for certain subjects in which the books give 
little help. My intention is solely to make clear in 
what way the scope and office of lectures are different 
from the scope and office of books. To produce books 
is the function of a University as a seat of learning. 
To produce lectures is the function of a University 
as a seat of education. And my special point is 
that every important commentary which is pub- 
lished ought to have the effect of reducing by 
one the number of subjects to which the Filelfo 
method is applicable. I noticed, for instance, that 
from the inter-collegiate syllabus promulgated at 
Oxford last year the name of Sophocles had dis- 
appeared. This (so I was told) was the direct con- 
sequence of the completion of Sir Richard Jebb's 
commentary. There will always be room for lectures 
on the Sophoclean drama. There is no longer room 
for the old-fashioned philological course on a single 
play. 

Thus, the natural implication of progress is that 
the sphere of the Filelfo method should year by year 
be contracted. It must be a mistake to do by means 
of lectures what is better done by means of books. 
The new regulations now give an ample field for 
lectures of a different sort, and our line of advance 
lies in that direction. It is not yet thought worth 
while that a student should know an amphora from 
a cylix, or be able to date a coin or to interpret a 
gem. But we have decided that he should know an 
Ionic column from a Corinthian, and enjoy a bowing 
acquaintance with the Aphrodite of Milo. Here is a 
great possibility of gain ; but if it is to become actual, 
we want more lectures on these and kindred subjects. 
Archaeology is miserably under-staffed. We ought not 



22 THE CAMBRIDGE CLASSICAL COUKSE 

to expect University Professors, whose proper field is 
advanced teaching and research, to give their time to 
imparting rudiments to beginners. The representatives 
of archaeology already do more elementary teaching 
than we are justified in laying upon them. Cambridge 
— gird at her as we may — witnesses many an heroic 
sacrifice. But she must not allow men upon whose 
writings her fame in two continents depends to 
surrender the bulk of their time to work which 
lesser men can do well enough. 

We want lectures on vase-painting, on coins, on gems, 
on inscriptions — lectures illustrated by a lantern and by 
the collections in the Fitzwilliam Museum. We want 
lectures on Athenian and Roman topography, on 
ancient mythology and religion, and a score of kindred 
subjects. And my point is that room for these courses 
can only be made by diminishing the number of book 
lectures of the fifteenth century type. If I were con- 
structing an Utopia, I should imagine a Cambridge ten 
years hence, in which a number of college lecturers had 
each made one of these subjects his hobby, precisely as 
nowadays a certain number keep up their Second Part 
work. With the teaching so provided, the recognition 
in the examination syllabus of some at least of these 
subjects, as alternatives, would assuredly follow. 

Finally, a word about books. The situation we have 
to face is this. A multitude of cheap editions, generally 
containing superficial and second-hand work, stands 
between the student and the great monuments of 
original scholarship. The deliberate purpose of many 
of these editions seems to be to defeat the aims of 
education. They are designed to save the student from 
using his brains, to eliminate any chance of his being- 
thrown back upon his own resources. He buys them 
because they are cheap, and because they save him 
trouble. He does not know that the trouble they save 
him is the trouble of becoming a scholar. 

This evil can be met only in one way. We must 

. L.ofC. 



LECTURES AND BOOKS 23 

make the good books which are also expensive as 
accessible as we can. A few colleges already possess, 
as appendages to their libraries, reading-rooms for 
undergraduate students, where the books which a 
classical man ought to consult are collected in a small 
compass, with facilities for reading and writing at 
ease. As it becomes increasingly evident that college 
libraries cannot succeed in their present attempt to 
meet the needs of advanced workers, it will, I think, 
be recognised that reference rooms of this sort are on 
the line of most useful development. We cannot 
provide eighteen complete libraries for lecturers : we 
can provide eighteen complete libraries for under- 
graduates. Further, it must be remembered that, 
while the lecturer can afford gradually to buy a library 
of his own, an undergraduate, reading Classics or 
History, never has the time and rarely has the means 
to accumulate a sufficient collection of books.* 

I argue, then, that the new regulations give us an 
occasion for gradually breaking with fifteenth century 
tradition, transforming our method, and diverting our 
power into new channels. And I urge that the men 
must be encouraged to rely more on the work of the 
great scholars of the past, and to learn the elementary 
principles of research. To make this possible, the books 
must be placed where they can see and handle them, so 
that the poorest scholar may have ready access to a 
collection adequate to all his needs. 

* A colleague has suggested to me that most undergraduates 
would be helped by the publication of a guide or catalogue, con- 
taining a list of editions and of works of reference of all sorts, 
such as they will need to consult. A list of this nature would 
also have the negative merit of saving them from wasting time 
and money on inferior books. It might take the form of a six- 
penny pamphlet, republished every other year (or every year, if 
possible), after revision by a small and autocratic committee of 
the Classical Society. The cost of a pamphlet of sixteen pages 
would be about covered by the sale of 160 copies. 



THE LECTURE SYSTEM 

Yesterday, when weary with writing and my mind quite dusty 
with considering these atoms, I was called to supper, and a salad 
I had asked for was set before me. ' It seems then,' said I, ' that 
if pewter dishes, leaves of lettuce, grains of salt, drops of water, 
vinegar, and oil, and slices of egg, had been flying about in the air 
from all eternity, it might at last happen by chance that there 
would come a salad.' ' Yes,' says my wife ; ' but not so nice and 
well dressed as this of mine is.' — Kepler. 

To call it a system is culpably inaccurate. The dispo- 
sition of the starry heavens can scarcely be more casual. 
It is not, strictly speaking, chaotic : it seems to be in 
that which I vaguely conceive as the nebular stage 
of evolution. To be precise, it consists of eighteen 
systems, each of which contains a number of bodies, 
varying from one or two to six or seven. Of these 
eighteen minor systems, six have coalesced into one 
nebula, and three have gone part of the way to form 
another. The nebulae exhibit the proper signs of 
coherent heterogeneity. At this peculiar stage the pro- 
cess has been prematurely arrested ; so that we may 
observe two complex systems and nine comparatively 
simple ones, suspended in adamantine void and exer- 
cising apparently no force of mutual attraction. The 
intermundane spaces are the home of the gods ; who, 
so far from lying beside their nectar, have business of 
their own, which they strenuously perform. But (no 
blame to them !) their labours do not make the process 
of evolution more expeditious. 

24 



THE LECTURE SYSTEM 25 

Thus, to the first glance, the Empedoclean principles 
of Friendship and Strife appear to have settled down 
into a state of final equilibration. Only on a more 
searching scrutiny some signs of rudimentary inter- 
action give promise that the condition is, after all, 
unstable. We have, in a word, a few lectures which 
are really intercollegiate, and not merely open to the 
members of a federate group. Here, as elsewhere, 
Dinos is king : not even the eye of faith can detect the 
evidence of design. Still, we have in this inchoate and 
casual phenomenon the possibility of an intelligible 
system. 

In Cambridge, the word 'system' falls with ill-sounding 
menace upon suspicious ears. We shrink in pardonable 
horror before the spectre of the well-rounded sphere, 
bound every way (as we conceive it) with red tape 
about the feet of dictatorial Ananke. Better incoherence, 
we cry ; better the futile reduplication of labour ; better 
the fortuitous clash and concourse down the illimitable 
inane ; better anything, than sacrifice one jot of the 
sacred charter of Lehrfreiheit. 

Now, as for Lehrfreiheit, I would burn these pages— 
perhaps in any case the most prudent course — sooner 
than be suspected of taking the lists as the champion of 
monopoly and privilege. What I shall try to show is 
this : that our present lack of teaching organisation 
does not favour any valuable sort of freedom, but on 
the contrary has, in great measure, the opposite effect. 
If its watchword is Lehrfreiheit, any one ignorant of 
German would suppose that this impressive term stood 
for a peculiarly galling species of slavery. 

Consider the situation. Towards the end of the 
Easter term, some thirteen independent bodies * meet, 
separately and without collaboration, to draw up their 

* I reckon as one the six colleges of the larger federation. 
The smaller group has not, I believe, a common system qf 
lectures. I may be in error on points of detail ; but these do not 
affect the main contention. 



26 THE CAMBKIDGE CLASSICAL COUKSE 

programmes of lectures for the coming year. No one 
present at the deliberations of one of them would guess 
that the other twelve were doing the same thing at 
nearly the same moment with precisely the same end in 
view. Each produces a scheme. There is no guarantee 
of any sort that the thirteen schemes will cover a 
sufficiently wide field, or will not overlap where they 
ought to dove-tail. There is nothing to prevent the 
simultaneous delivery to small audiences of four or five 
courses (say) on the Isthmian Odes. There is nothing 
to ensure that a student who needs a course on some 
other subject of equal importance will be provided for 
at all. Can any one seriously maintain that these 
proceedings are satisfactory? I think not ; but since 
nothing is done to amend them, I may be allowed to 
point out briefly how unsatisfactory they are both for 
lecturer and for student. 

It is alleged that the method secures for the lecturer 
the freedom to choose what subject he pleases. This is 
all that Lehrfreiheit can mean. But does the method 
secure this freedom? There are, no doubt, some 
lecturers whose seniority enables them to say, 'This 
subject interests me ; I will lecture on it, and on nothing 
else.' This is, to my mind, the only right position for 
any lecturer to take up. But if this is Lehrfreiheit, we 
want more of it. What is the case of the junior 
members of a staff? * However considerate their 
seniors may be, the fag end of the programme, justly 
and necessarily, falls to their share. For them freedom 
of choice can be little or none. The subjects chosen 
must make some show of being representative. Suppose 

* I hope that I shall not be thought capable of the meanness of 
veiling a personal complaint under the form of a general criticism. 
But, as there is always some one who thinks the worst, I must, at 
the cost of obtruding myself, definitely state that I have no 
personal ground of complaint whatever in respect of any subject 
mentioned in this pamphlet. I plead for others who are less 
fortunate. 



THE LECTUKE SYSTEM 27 

that there are four lecturers and four selected books, 
one of verse and one of prose in each language. When 
the senior lecturers have chosen their subjects, the 
junior finds himself condemned (say) to Latin Prose. 
No matter though his hobby be Greek Poetry, and he 
holds Cicero and Livy in abhorrence. If only ten or a 
dozen cases of this sort occur every year, it is serious 
enough. How can a man lecture with freshness and 
enthusiasm on a subject forced upon him without regard 
to his tastes ? Yet the frequent occurrence of such cases 
is inevitably entailed by our utter lack of co-ordination. 
Is it not manifest that a greater freedom of choice is 
possible when the whole field of classical literature has 
to be covered once by fifty or sixty lecturers than when 
it has to be covered thirteen deep by thirteen indepen- 
dent bodies, of which nearly all are less than six in 
strength ? 

Further, the College system of lecturing overtaxes 
even the largest staffs. One course a year is as much as 
a lecturer — at any rate a young lecturer — can satis- 
factorily undertake. The preparation involves months 
of labour; the delivery preoccupies the leisure of a 
whole term. The rest of the time left over from private 
teaching and countless other duties ought to be free for 
fresh study and for writing. Lay upon such men a 
heavier burden than this, and what may you expect in 
ten years time ? A certain percentage will be jaded 
hacks. Some, whose intellectual vitality is longer in the 
killing, will be men of disappointed hopes and broken 
health. Others, no doubt, will, ' worry through ' : an 
exceptional physique and animal spirits will enable 
them to do the work of two men, and do it efficiently. 
But from these also the system claims its toll — sacrificed 
ambitions of authorship, opportunities for study and for 
thought denied. Meanwhile, the output of solid books 
by College lecturers is slow and meagre. Will any 
competent observer deny that this description is in the 
main a true one ? If not, then we are bound to consider 



28 THE CAMBBIDGE CLASSICAL COUESE 

whether our system is the most economical that can be 
devised. 

And now for the students — what does Lehrfreiheit 
mean to them ? In the first place, they are, of course, 
injured by all the causes which tend to make lectures a 
weary, flat, and barren imposition. But they suffer 
also in other ways. For what reason do we recommend 
a student to attend a given course ? Because it will 
interest and profit him? because it will fill a gap in 
his reading? because he wishes to hear the lecturer? 
or to study the subject ? No. The sole reason we can 
give is that the course happens to be delivered within 
the walls of the College to which he happens to belong. 
We must needs ' drive the flock that thirsts not to a pool 
disliked,' with no better excuse than that the pool lies 
on this side of the wall and not on that. If we have 
sacrificed freedom for ourselves, it has not been done to 
save it for our pupils. 

This state of things must continue so long as every 
College draws up its own programme without reference 
to the rest, and encourages its men, with little respect 
to individual needs, to attend just those lectures and no 
others. It is a system of privilege, of monopoly, of 
protection. What we want is competition and free 
trade. I am told there is a difficulty about fees 
for intercollegiate lectures. The difficulty has been 
surmounted in other departments here; it has been 
surmounted for classics at Oxford. A committee of 
College tutors, bent on solving the problem, could solve 
it in a week. 

The advantages of a single scheme of lectures for the 
whole University should now be apparent. A course of 
lectures ought almost always to be the outcome of 
recent first-hand work. When a man's mind is full 
of fresh ideas and quickened by the excitement of dis- 
covery, then is the time to lecture, because then is the 
chance of interesting his class, while the discipline of 
exposition will test and clarify his results. The lectures 



THE LECTUEE SYSTEM 29 

over, the results in many cases should go at once into a 
book. Finally a period of rest, followed by fresh study 
of a different subject ; and so the process begins again. 
As things now are, only a professor can hope to 
approach this ideal. But the main obstacle which 
prevents the College lecturer from contemplating it 
otherwise than with a bitter smile, is our College system 
of teaching. We want not fewer men, but fewer 
lectures and larger audiences ; gaining thereby more 
time to read, to think, and to write. 

There is another field in which labour of a very 
unprofitable kind is wasted like water. A corollary 
of the College lecture system is the College examina- 
tion. If we had a single lecture syllabus for the 
University, we might have a single set of examination 
papers. Every lecturer would make a paper on his 
own subject. The men in each college might be ex- 
amined on the courses they had attended. The looking 
over and marking could be done either by each lecturer 
for his own paper, or by the College staff for its own 
men. It is no trouble to a man to set a paper on his 
own lectures : to set one on an unfamilar subject is a 
heavy task. The saving of labour by this expedient 
would be greater than at first appears.* 

* The labour spent on producing translation papers and fair 
copies might be reduced by a simple device, which entails no 
change of system. There are perhaps fifty lecturers in all 
engaged in this work. They either make new papers (by way 
of keeping their hands in) or reproduce old ones from the College 
stock. They have no access to the stock belonging to other 
Colleges. Now and then a volume is put together and published. 
But the temptation is to include the pieces which are most 
brilliant, and therefore least instructive ; and publication tends 
to debar the further use of them in Cambridge. 

I suggest that fifty extra copies of every College paper should 
be printed and kept till the end of the year. Then one complete 
set might be sent to each composition lecturer ; and he would 
bind it and transmit it to his successor. The extra expense of 
printing would be trifling ; it might be borne by those who 



30 THE CAMBBIDGE CLASSICAL COUKSE 

I conclude, then, that the College lecture system has 
always been wasteful and pernicious. Now that we 
have to find teaching for new subjects, and time for 
them to be studied, it is more pernicious than ever. It 
must go. 

received the sets. By this means every composition lecturer 
would soon possess a large and multifarious collection, from which 
he could select at will. The rights of publication would remain 
unaffected. 



EPILOGUE 

It came to pass in the antiquity of time and of past ages that 
the Caliph of Bassra called together the three wisest men of all 
his subjects and commanded them to counsel him concerning 
the governance of his dominions. For, being young, he knew 
not that wise men love not to give counsel, and none but fools 
abide thereby. 

The first sage said : Hearken, Caliph, to the Counsel of 
Prudence. All things are by the will of Allah (upon Him be 
the Peace and the Prayer !). Seek not in the days of thy youth 
to make straight that which is crooked ; but rather, when thy 
beard shall be grey, then do that which seemeth good. 

The second sage said : Hearken, O Caliph, to the Counsel of 
Experience. All things are by the will of Allah (upon Him, etc.). 
With grey hairs cometh Acquiescence. Wait, and thou shalt see 
that all is for the best ; and the desire to mend that which now 
seemeth ill shall pass from thee, and thou shalt be at rest. 

The third sage said : Hearken, O Caliph, to the Counsel of 
Common Sense. Some things are by the will of Allah (upon 
Him, etc.) ; and some by the will of Shei'tan (upon him be the 
undying malediction!). Incline not, therefore, unto the words of 
Prudence ; neither open thine ear to the mouth of Experience. 
For that which is of Allah thou canst neither hurt nor hinder : but 
that which is of Sheitan thou canst not mend too soon. 

Then the Caliph arose from his seat, and embraced the third 
sage, and put upon him a robe of honour, and made him Vizir 
over all his dominions. — The Three Sages of Bassra. 

Looking back over these pages, I am astonished at 
the moderation of my demands. I am half afraid 
that the reader will exclaim, 'Is this all?' Of course 
it is not all. I have, with one unimportant exception, 

31 




32 THE CAMBEIDGE CLASSICAL ( 1 

019 598 451 

deliberately confined my range to reforms which may 

be brought into effect in the next ten years. No one 

supposes that the Tripos has already reached a final 

perfection. No one supposes that the changes here 

indicated will do more than make it a little better. 

But if they will do so much, they were worth the 

argument. 

More stress, however, has been laid on changes of 
organisation. Here I shall not be taxed with being 
cautious to excess. I do not forget a comfortable 
proverb which contrasts precipitate folly with angelic 
hesitation. But — to borrow an instance which is in some 
respects unfortunate — the recent history of English 
politics shows that the headlong fool may sometimes 
carry the angels over the brink. 

I have attacked not men, but institutions. If I hate 
the institutions, it is because they seem to impose a 
fruitless sacrifice on the men whom I respect and 
honour. 



DNWIN BEOTHEBS, LIMITED, THE GEESHAM PRESS, WOKING AND LONDON. 




LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



019 598 451 7 



